Prompt Context Engineer Skill for Cowork

Summary

A Cowork skill that transforms rough prompts into clear, reusable, context-engineered prompts using Andrej Karpathy's context engineering principles.

Skill

The full skill definition is in SKILL.md. To use it, place this skill in your Cowork skills directory.

Trigger Phrases

Say any of these in a Cowork-enabled chat to activate the skill:

• "Improve this prompt"
• "Rewrite this as a better prompt"
• "Turn this into a reusable system prompt"
• "Engineer this prompt for better results"
• "Claude is not giving me what I want, fix this prompt"

Description

This skill teaches Cowork to perform prompt context engineering instead of prompt guessing. It diagnoses what the user is trying to achieve, audits missing context components, infers sensible defaults, asks only minimal clarifying questions when needed, and outputs a structured prompt that is easier for language models to follow.

The workflow is designed to optimize signal-to-noise in the context window by including only load-bearing instructions: task framing, role, relevant background, constraints, examples, output format, and success criteria. The skill also preserves user intent and avoids expanding scope.

Contributors

Barnam Bora

Version history

Version	Date	Comments
1.0	July 14, 2026	Initial release

Instructions

1. Copy this folder (except the assets folder and README.md file) into your OneDrive Documents/Cowork/skills/ directory
2. Ensure the final path is Documents/Cowork/skills/prompt-context-engineer/SKILL.md
3. Start a new Microsoft Copilot chat with Cowork skills enabled
4. Paste a rough prompt and ask Cowork to improve or engineer it
5. Cowork will return a structured, context-engineered prompt in a single copyable block

For setup details, see Copilot Cowork Skills documentation.

Customization

• Add your team's preferred output schema in references/templates.md
• Tailor role and tone defaults for your domain (product, support, legal, engineering)
• Add 1 to 3 high-quality few-shot examples for repeated prompt patterns
• Keep prompts concise by removing non-load-bearing lines after each revision

Prerequisites

• Microsoft 365 Copilot
• Cowork skills enabled in your Microsoft 365 Copilot environment

Help

We do not support samples, but this community is always willing to help, and we want to improve these samples. We use GitHub to track issues, which makes it easy for community members to volunteer their time and help resolve issues.

You can try looking at issues related to this sample to see if anybody else is having the same issues.

If you encounter any issues using this sample, create a new issue.

Finally, if you have an idea for improvement, make a suggestion.

Disclaimer

THIS CODE IS PROVIDED AS IS WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, MERCHANTABILITY, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT.

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